The Verdict -- Robert Gardner

Every day of my life, I step over a metal plaque embedded in the

sidewalk near my house. The plaque simply says, “Birtcher.”

Now I suppose to a lot of people that bronze plaque is meaningless. To

the more sophisticated, it means that the adjoining structure was built

by someone named Birtcher. To me, it means a lot more. To be specific, it

means one of the low points in a life filled with low points.

“A long time ago” at my age -- 90 -- means a long, long time ago, with

several wars, a depression and a few other odds and ends thrown in. And

so, a long time ago, the Gardners and the Birtchers were neighbors on

Chestnut Street in Santa Ana. My father worked for the Pendleton Lumber

Co. because my father was some kind of shirttail relative of Mr.

Pendleton.

Mr. Birtcher was, I believe, a contractor, founder of the Birtcher

Co., which has something to do with the plaque but nothing to do with the

rest of the story that concerns a wedding. Just who was getting married

to who or whom (I’ve never figured out the whos and whoms), I do not

know.

What I do know is that the organizers of the wedding decided a couple

of cute kids would really round out the ceremony. They chose Mr.

Birtcher’s daughter as the flower girl and me as the flower boy. We were

each given a large paper cornucopia filled with rose petals. So far so

good.

The music started, and Miss Birtcher and I led the wedding party into

the church, tossing rose petals as we went. However, my inherent lack of

restraint took over, and I threw, and I mean threw, rose petals as far as

I could throw the pesky things. I didn’t just favor the people near the

aisle, I gave the back row their share. Of course, in my enthusiasm, I

quickly ran out of rose petals. Believing even then in equality, I didn’t

want to cheat those farther down the aisle, so I began to grab handfuls

of rose petals out of Miss Birtcher’s cornucopia. However, she wasn’t

interested in sharing.

When I grabbed a handful of her petals, she whacked me. And because my

belief in equality extended to that of the sexes, I whacked her back. To

heck with the flowers and to heck with the wedding.

The two of us stood there whacking each other to the utter horror of

those responsible for the ceremony, and we were quickly marched out of

church.

And that is what I always think of when I step over the plaque that

reads “Birtcher” on the sidewalk in Corona del Mar.

* ROBERT GARDNER is a Corona del Mar resident and a former judge. His

column runs Tuesdays.